The new poker year – 2019 has begun in style for Team India! Our young gun – Abhinav Iyer has taken down the VND 8 Billion GTD Main Event at the ongoing 2019 Asian Poker Tour (APT) Vietnam series for the hefty VND 2,269,092,000 (INR 69.51 Lac) first-place prize, his career-best live score.

Hailing from Mumbai, Iyer had been in amazing form in 2018. He not only debuted the WSOP 2018 but also made it to the final table in various prestigious events, including his 6th place finish in the HK$ 2,700 + 300 NLHE at the APPT (MPC28), a 4th place place finish in the HK$ 7,200 + 800 NLHE at the Macau Millions and again a 4th place finish in the DPT Colossus Super High Roller NLH event. He ended the year 2018 in style by finishing 4th in the WPT India High Roller and also making a deep run in the WPT India ME. And now what a start to 2019, he has won the APT Vietnam Main Event!

Vietnam seems to be his favourite hunting ground as the player had earlier finished 6th in the 2018 WPT Vietnam High Roller Event (October). After Dhaval Mudgal’s WPT Vietnam ME win in October 2018, Iyer’s this win is the first live international title for India in 2019, which has just begun.

Iyer’s Main Event Journey

Iyer had entered the final day of the Main Event as the chip leader with 4,825,000 in chips and within just early levels of play, he took his stack to a 10 Million-mark, going far ahead of his next closest opponent Te Mai, who held 2.6 Million in chips. The FT that was streamed live on APT’s Twitch and YouTube channels lasted for over 3 hours. Iyer managed to eliminate 4 out of the 8 FT players, including Sim Kok Wai, Ming Yang Liu, Mark Gruendemann and Huu Tuan Nguyen to eventually start the heads-up play against the Japanese pro – Hirokawa with a huge 5:1 chip advantage.

Japan’s Hirokawa played well but was unable to overcome the huge chip gap. Eventually, the player had to settle for second place finish for VND 1,512,731,000 and Iyer took home all glory, earning the first-place prizemoney of VND 2,269,092,000 (INR 69.51 Lac) and thus beating his previous best score INR 10.9 Lac, which he scored for finishing 4th in the DPT Colossus Super High Roller event last year.

The final hand of the tournament saw Iyer raise to 500,000 with 2d 2c and Horikawa move all-in with Qd Jd. The board ran out 10c 7c Qc 2h 8s. Horikawa flopped a pair of queens but Iyer improved his hand to a set on the turn to win his career-best score and his first-ever international live title.

Final Table Payouts (VND):

Abhinav Iyer – VND 2,269,092,000

Daiki Horikawa – VND 1,512,731,000

Te Mai – VND 1,051,629,000

Huu Tuan Nguyen – VND 759,571,000

Mark Gruendemann – VND 568,039,000

Hak Do Kim – VND 438,408,000

Ming Yang Liu – VND 348,137,000

Sim Kok Wai – VND 283,642,000

A large Indian contingent took part in the APT Vietnam Main Event 2019. However, only 4 of these players could manage to post ITM scores. The three other Indians who manged to cash out in the event were Eka Vedantham (45th for INR 1.68 Lac), Dhaval Mudgal (49th for INR 1.40 Lac) and Meherzad Munsaf (58th for INR 1.16 Lac). We congratulate all of them and wish good luck ahead!

Plenty of tournaments are still lined up for the APT Kickoff Vietnam 2019 and a strong Indian contingent will be participating in these events. Keep following OPN for more updates.

Want to win big in online poker but don’t have account as yet? Sign-up HERE & get 500 to play!